PRESS DAMI IM HAS CONQUERED EUROPE AND AUS­TRALIA. NOW SHE’S PLAN­NING WORLD DOM­I­NA­TION WITH HER NEW SIN­GLE

In the past seven months, Dami Im has taken out sec­ond place at Euro­vi­sion, gone straight to No. 1 on the itunes charts with her sin­gle “Sound of Si­lence” and sold out her Aus­tralian tour. And yet, when Stel­lar sug­gests that 2016 is the Year of Im, she laughs. It’s this hu­mil­ity that has gar­nered her a loyal fan base, dubbed the Dami Army.

“I think the rea­son peo­ple get be­hind me is be­cause I’m not a per­fect, con­fi­dent, Pho­to­shopped pop star,” says the 28-year-old. “I am clumsy and I have many flaws. I think peo­ple re­late to that. They are pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing me be­cause my story is their story.”

De­spite her so-called flaws, Im has found con­fi­dence with fame, more now than when she took out the fifth sea­son of X Fac­tor in 2013. “There are still days when I feel self-con­scious. It’s hard as I feel like ev­ery­one is look­ing at me, that I’m ex­posed,” she ad­mits. “But I feel more con­fi­dent [now] be­cause peo­ple treat me with more re­spect. There are days when I’m like, ‘I can do this. I’ve got this!’”

To­day is one of those days. Wear­ing a red Akira en­sem­ble, she is danc­ing in front of the cam­era to a selec­tion of chart hits. Away from the Stel­lar shoot, she is work­ing on her own batch of songs and has just re­leased her new sin­gle “Fight­ing For Love”.

Im says the track is the start of a new era in her sound. “For me, it’s about em­pow­er­ment. I’ve al­ways wanted to sing about love and to spread hope,” she ex­plains. “It’s kind of scary when you are bring­ing orig­i­nal songs out into the world. I have to em­brace that vul­ner­a­bil­ity and see what hap­pens.”

Fol­low­ing her Euro­vi­sion suc­cess, Im now hopes her new mu­sic will break in­ter­na­tion­ally.

“I want to try out new mar­kets, new coun­tries and do a few trips around the world. Any­thing can hap­pen!”